Monday, April 6, 2015

Week 14 - My Garden Year?

One of the things I love about gardening is that every year
is a new beginning. A new chance to try new things, get it right, whatever. My
favorite part of gardening is the planning and boy can I plan but when it comes
to execution, I mostly fall short. The blazing hot and humid Nebraska summers
mean I have a small window in spring to get the heavy work done before it’s
just too hot to be outside. Add my usual annual trek to Europe in May and the
window is even smaller. Well, between the early spring weather this year and
the fact that I won’t be going to Europe next month, I’m thinking this might
actually be the year that I get things in order. So far so good.

The weather this week was weird – try high 80’s on
Wednesday! It was so hot that we had thunder storms on Wednesday night. Since I
have knitting on Monday and swim Tuesday and Thursday, Wednesday is my night to
get outside but not this week. I made up for it over the weekend though. I
spent hours outside both Saturday and Sunday and by the time I stopped on
Sunday, I had raked the entire yard and cleaned out every bed (there’s a bit
left back on the alley – low priority), all the roses were pruned and I’d moved
one of my raised veg beds, sifted and added compost to it and planted my early
crops. Between that and the work I did out front last weekend, things look
great. Andrea even noticed when she stopped by on Saturday. Yay! And it’s only
the first week of April. I am SO hopeful.

I had been kicking around the idea of taking a week off this
month to work outside but came up with a new plan this week that Nora approved.
I came to realize that working outside every single day was not going to work
for my knee so I looked at taking Wednesdays off for the rest of the month,
Wednesdays being midway between the weekend so my body has had a few days to
recuperate. While that looks great on paper, the weather wouldn’t be
cooperating this coming week and who knows for the rest of the month. There’s
also the reality of it being too chilly to work outside most mornings, which
would leave me using vacation time for sitting on my butt. So the plan is I’m
going to play it fast and loose with my vacation time, deciding based on
weather, my schedule and my motivation when I’ll take an afternoon off and I’ll
just leave at noon. I think it’s going to work perfectly – I’ll be up and out
every day and still get a few nice afternoons out in the garden while
maximizing vacation hours. Perfect. Maybe I’ll take a week in the fall.

There were weird bits besides the weather this week. Tuesday
was cleaning lady day so I’d done all the last minute neatizing Monday after
knitting and Tuesday morning. I was excited to get home after swimming, when
the instructor didn’t show so we just did our own thing in the deep end, to a
clean house. Well, I opened the door and could see that the floor was still dirty.
I facebooked my cleaning lady, who had been posting all kinds of pics of her
new grandbaby who, come to find out, is in Arizona. She forgot to tell me she
was not coming. And she’s just skipping so won’t be back for another 2 weeks.
Sheesh!

I was also having trouble sleeping, waking up an hour early
several days in a row. When I woke up early again on Thursday, I texted Darla
to see if she was up and we met for breakfast at Lulu’s Lunchery – a new
restaurant on the north side of Lincoln. We had yummy lemon pancakes and caught
up, leaving with a plan to eat out every week that I’m not rotating. The bonus was leaving the restaurant early enough that I had time for Jiffy Lube before
work. Way to put good use to not sleeping, right? It put me in great mood for
the rest of the day.

Rotating. I could not wait to start eating healthy again. I
purposely took 2 weeks off so I wouldn’t be rotating over Easter but Helen was
working so there was no family get together and I ended up eating a butt load of
crap for a solid 2 weeks. Not good. I ended my break with Burger King for lunch
on Easter. Time to get healthy again and drop more weight!

To end on a positive note, March was all about socks. Now
you may be thinking it’s always about socks for me but this month I actually
knitted 3 pair of socks for the first time ever. All three are Christmas gifts
so it’s only March and I’ve already got half of my Christmas socks done. I also
picked up the most gorgeous pair of socks I’ve ever knitting from Yarn Charm,
where they’ve been hanging for months, and mailed them off to Ginny for her
birthday. She loved them. So, all socks and all good. Isn’t life great?

On that note, I hope you all had a nice Passover, Easter or
whatever you celebrate. Happy spring!